Read Me Like a Book

I've been reading faster than usual over the past week or two – whizzed through several of Simon Kernick's breathless race-against-time page turners: One By One is a variation on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which was originally published in the UK in 1939 as Ten Little Niggers, the title being changed for the first US edition in 1940, although the original continued in the UK until the 1985 which seems quiter unbelievable now. Dead Man's Gift stars Scope, the hero of Stay Alive and is a three-part Kindle only story; a bit slower-paced than usual, but the good guys and the bad guys are not quite what you expect.
Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night carries the story of the redoubtable Canon's wooing of Hildegard further, while he also continues to dabble in detective work; and again in Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil and Sidnery Chambers and The Perils of the Night, both of which I am somehow reading simultaneously – which is easier on the Kindle than with real, physical books. I really like Sidney, and the other characters are believable and just like the people we all meet in our everyday lives. These are seductively quiet stories, told at an easy pace, which is quite fitting for the setting, though I am beginning to worry that the Vicar of Grantchester may find himself forced to move with Hildegard to Ely, for it seems that promotion in the Church of England is a bit like promotion in the Police Force, and involves a change of location with the new rank. But that would involve leaving DI 'Geordie' Keating, unless he was promoted to DCI and also found himself transferred. But I am jumping the gun – read on, Teri, and leave the plotting to James Runcie, who knows his Church well, being the son of a former Archbishop of Canterbury.

And I have just received a package from The Book People who sell most of their books in workplaces, schools and other organisations, but also online and I am looking forward to reading three from Barbara Pym and another trio by Patricia Wentworth. That should keep me out of mischief!